SOURCE: Rights Action
Bad to Worse for Garifuna Communities along Honduras’ Caribbean Coast
by Rights Action
On July 6, 2026, a violent land grab eviction was carried out by armed police in the Garifuna community of San Juan; followed by the illegal detention of five Garifuna land defenders; followed by a ruling by a local court that the five are part of an “organized crime ring”, moving the corrupted legal proceeding to national criminal courts.
On July 16, Karen Spring sent this update: “In response, OFRANEH, Garifuna communities, and several social movement organizations are blocking the main highway in northern Honduras to demand that the case be returned to courts in Tela (and not in the city of San Pedro Sula or in the national organized crime court). The ruling is racist and corrupt as the community of San Juan has land titles to the land in dispute, as recognized by the Honduran state and the InterAmerican Court of Human Rights.”
This situation will not get better soon for the five criminalized Garifuna folks; and not for close to 50 Garifuna villages stretching hundreds of kilometers from near the Guatemalan border to the eastern Gracias a Dios region.
For decades, wealthy Honduran elites and the global tourism industry (including countless Canadian and U.S. operators and investors) have coveted the Caribbean shoreline and Bay Islands (including Roatan), and have been chipping away (often violently) to carve out chunks of the shoreline, all of which is ancestral Garifuna lands and territories as recognized by Honduran and international law.
This most recent spike in violent dispossession of Garifuna communities is the foreseeable aftermath of the U.S. intervention into Honduras’ November 2025 electoral process, resulting in the U.S. supporting Nasry Asfura of the organized crime-linked National Party as President. This trashing of Honduras’ democracy was accompanied by President Trump giving a ‘get-out-of-jail’ card to Juan Orlando Hernandez (JOH), the former National Party President of Honduras who had run a drug-smuggling crime ring from the President’s office from 2014-2022.
Democratic allie of the U.S. and Canada
During his entire drug-trafficking presidency, JOH was recognized as a “democratic allie” of the U.S., Canada, Israel and Western European allies, all of whom now have recognized President Nasry Asfura as the legitimate President.
Renewed call for funding for, and solidarity with OFRANEH
Since 1998, Rights Action has been sending grassroots funding to OFRANEH for their visionary, courageous work in defense and promotion of Garifuna territorial and indigenous rights, and the environment. We have just sent more of your funds. To donate, see below.
Below, we share a solidarity call from the Honduras Solidarity Network. Please send your own messages of solidarity to OFRANEH and share this information with your local media and elected officials in the U.S. and Canada. This on-going nightmare in Honduras since 2009, and now renewed, is also a “made in the U.S.A. and Canada” nightmare.
HSN solidarity call (July 15, 2026):
Miriam Miranda of OFRANEH has made an urgent call for statements of solidarity in support of the Garifuna communities under attack. Below is a statement from the Honduras Solidarity Network. Use as a template and share it out widely, or create your own.
*Tag your message, @PJdeHonduras and @OFRANEH*
As 5 community members from San Juan Tela are in court today facing trumped up charges of “land theft” for being on their communal ancestral land, we declare the following:
1. We stand in solidarity with OFRANEH and with the Garifuna communities defending their territories in Honduras,
2. We condemn the ongoing and violent violations of their territorial, civil and human rights.
3. We call on the Honduran state to stop violating and to immediately implement the rulings of the InterAmerican Court of Human Rights court that recognize and protect the rights of the Garifuna communities of San Juan, Triunfo de la Cruz, Punto Piedra, and Cayos Cochinos.
4. We demand that all charges be dropped against San Juan community members: Deinor Osmany Mejia Arzube, Irbin Rene Lopez Cortes, Carlos Enrique Fernández Guzmán, Onil Rigoberto Hernandez Zelaya, Sara Abigail Acosta Acosta.
